As transistor device sizes continue to become smaller on semiconductor devices, the wiring for signal transmissions becomes a limiting factor in the overall size of the semiconductor device.
In a typical semiconductor device each data transmitting circuit has a dedicated data line wiring connected between the data transmitting circuit and the data receiving circuit. When there are a large number of data transmitting and data receiving circuits, a large area of the semiconductor device is consumed by the large number of data line wirings.
An example illustrating the conventional approach of data line wiring and data transmission in a semiconductor device is set forth in a block schematic diagram in FIG. 1 and given the general reference character 100.
Semiconductor device 100 includes data transmission circuits 110 to 140, and data receiving circuits 160 to 190. Data transmission circuit 110 transmits data to data receiving circuit 160 along a dedicated data line wiring 150. Data transmission circuit 120 transmits data to data receiving circuit 170 along a dedicated data line wiring 152. Data transmission circuit 130 transmits data to data receiving circuit 180 along a dedicated data line wiring 156. Data transmission circuit 140 transmits data to data receiving circuit 190 along a dedicated data line wiring 154. Although only four data transmission circuits (110 to 140) and four data receiving circuits (160 to 190) are shown, semiconductor device 100 can include many such circuits with each data transmission circuit including a dedicated data line wiring.
Furthermore, each data line wiring typically uses the same wiring layer, for example a metal wiring layer. The data line wiring can also be typically laid out in a wiring channel, which may be excluded from having circuitry such as transistors. In such a case, the data line wiring can consume a lot of area, which makes the semiconductor device 100 have a larger “die size”. With a larger “die size”, fewer chips (i.e. semiconductor devices) can be manufactured on a single silicon wafer, which increases manufacturing costs.
It would be desirable to provide a method of decreasing the number of data line wirings on a semiconductor device and thereby reduce the “die size” to decrease manufacturing costs.